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Money, Money Everywhere

Four days in, and “The Brooklyn Wars” is off to a roaring start, with more than 25% raised toward the $6,000 goal! As I understand it, however, with Kickstarter roaring starts are often followed by mumbled middles, and donations have already begun tailing off as anticipated.

I appreciate all your contributions more than I can say, but I need to ask one more favor: If you haven’t yet, please post to Facebook, or tweet, or send an email to at least a few friends who might be interested in “The Brooklyn Wars.” Since over the years I failed to request that all the newspapers and magazines I wrote for include an “if you like my writing, email me your contact info so I can tell you about future self-funded book projects” notice in my bio, it’s taking a lot for me to call people’s attention to this book, so the more word-of-mouth, the better.

Meanwhile, the past few days of talking with people about this project has reminded me just how much the transformation of Brooklyn and who wins and loses from it is a vital, ongoing concern. On Saturday, for example, the nascent Prospect Heights Tenants Association held a protest march to demand an end to massive rent hikes in that fast-changing neighborhood. (I wasn’t able to attend, but will be getting reports of how it went.) I also walked past the site of the seven-story single-family mansion being built in Williamsburg; one of the topics I’m eager to research for “The Brooklyn Wars” is whether an influx of deep-pocketed homeowners has reduced population density in certain hot areas, displacing multiple apartment dwellers for the sake of single-family homes, and worsening Brooklyn’s already tight housing crunch.

If you’re wondering what else will be in the book — or, really, wondering anything that I can answer — please drop me a line via that Contact Me button over on the right, and I’ll work it into this page’s FAQ, which I hope to post later this week. Assuming by then I’m not too busy doing this, that is.

“A great read, impeccably researched. This is essential reading for anybody who witnessed the mind-blowing transformation of Brooklyn over the past 20 years and hungers to understand what actually happened.” —Kelly Anderson, director of My Brooklyn
“A teeth-gnashing account of how the Big Money boys teamed up with City Hall pols to grab everything from Coney Island’s Thunderbolt to once–working class neighborhoods of downtown Brooklyn in the name of progress.” —Tom Robbins, Investigative Journalist in Residence, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism
“The Brooklyn Wars recovers the great Brooklyn virtue of telling it like it is. Neil deMause writes with the street-savvy common sense Brooklyn was known for before it became a ‘brand.’” —Paul Moses, author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians
“Expertly recounts the meteoric transition of New York’s most famous borough in true stories that read like gripping fiction.” —Amy Nicholson, director of Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride